9 Robert Frost Quotes on Writing

Robert Frost quotes on writing

11. A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

35. Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.

41. When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don't feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing.... You must have form - performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports - and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism.

107. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

117. It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has.

120. Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

139. I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

148. Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask myself what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they do something; unless they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker, from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds.

149. [Style is] that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.